The Sweded film project was something I was looking forward to ever since my UWE interview, it was a chance to dive in and get making something and also a chance to get to know our Media Futures project group. While I wasn’t aware of the term Sweding (coined in Michel Gondry’s film Be Kind Rewind.) I was aware of the concept and it was something that appealed to me.

We had a very short time to prepare for this assignment so it was essential that the group quickly got together to create a plan; the same afternoon we were due to visit the scrapstore in Bristol to buy props.

We had around 2 days to prepare and 2 hours to film our Sweded film before presenting it to the rest of the group. I’m a person who likes to be prepared so it was unsettling when there was a lacklustre response to my requests for a script or a shooting list. We seemed to adopt a ‘we’ll sort it out on the day’ approach.

I became the cameraman/DoP as well as preparing some props for us to use (Rugby posts/ Gravestone) and on the day when it mattered the sort it out on the day approach seemed to work. Underpressure the group sprang into action and from nowhere seemingly we had a team effort and an impressive product created in just over an hour and a half.

When we showed our product the rest of the group were impressed. We seemed to have reproduced some of the key scenes that form the narrative and using creative camera angles and props we did seem to have a relatively good standard of production value.

I think the fact that we discovered another group sweding the same film as us made us realise we had a bit of competition and maybe helped us to concentrate our efforts.

Overall it was a great experience and the response from the group and our tutor was a great confidence builder. Working so closely together so soon into the course really helped to break the ice in the group and gave an opportunity to show of some of our individual skills which brought us to uni in the first place.